Celebrating Murphy’s Law

 

The sewer wasn’t supposed to back up.  The plumber who roto-rooted the connection into which the trees love to twine their tendrils and drink deeply (trees have no taste – do they not know what that stuff is???) the last three times this has happened (our house is 150 years old) urged me, URGED ME,  to buy a bucket of pellets that you’re supposed to pour down the drains and melt the roots.  But it’s not bad for the environment he assures me.

So we bought the bucket of stuff.  And then, of course, totally forgot to use it.  Until last Friday when we were getting ready to head down to Windsor to visit Alan’s Dad.  Alan went to get something out of the basement.  And then came pelting up the stairs  to call the plumber.  But no one was available.  We really didn’t want to keep the man with bone cancer waiting for his dinner,  NO PRESSURE, so we decided to try the pellets.

When I went down to make sure Alan hadn’t succumbed, I walked into the middle of a magic show.  OK.  It was a really wet and smelly magic show, but still.  A plume of smoke or possibly toxic fumes was emenating from the stack pipe, gradually increasing in both volume and speed until KAPOOF! one final flourish and the drain seemed to clear.

I was hoping for a genie and at least a couple of wishes, but we had drainage so we headed down to Windsor.

Alan’s  Dad has finished his radiation treatments and is now waiting to hear from his oncologist whether it worked or not.

On the way home from Windsor, I was having a little snack in the car and my molar blew up.  The molar that an extremely crap dentist had bullied me into getting a crown for eight years ago.  To avoid the need for a root canal.  Which he then had to do because he’d done the crown wrong.  And because he was a crap dentist, it took THREE DAYS  and led to the disintegration of the molar behind it and then it blew up on Sunday in the car.

On Monday I went to my real dentist,  who gave me the bad news that there is hardly anything left worth saving.  But we can try.  It would involve another root canal, rebuilding the tooth and then putting a crown on the rebuild.  It would cost the same as a trip to Europe and might not even work, are ya feelin’ lucky?

While he was taking out the remaining portion of the crown, it fought back and he ended up stabbing himself in the finger and then had to ask me awkward questions about my personal habits.  So either someone put a curse on that molar, or it is just bad to the bone and out to take down anyone who messes with it.  Either way, it’s coming out.  I know it wou’t go down without a fight, but believe me, it is going DOWN!!

When I got home from the dentist, there was an envelope from the lawyer with the clearance papers on my mother’s estate.  It took four years, endless hours on the phone, a mountain of paperwork to the lawyer, the accountant and the Canada Revenue Agency who reassessed her taxes for the year she died, four days into the year, three of which she spent in a coma and the first was a holiday and what kind of financial dealings do they imagine an eighty-three year old cancer patient in a nursing home can get up to??????

I love Murphy’s Law.

Because when the lovely woman at the plumber’s office yesterday said, “This is your lucky day!  We’ve had a cancellation.”  I didn’t think “I’ve got raw sewage backing up into my basement and you’re telling me I’m lucky?????” I just thought, “Yay!”

And when the papers from the lawyer showed up, in order and at the proper address, I thought, “Oh thank goodness, I’m not being deported!” (things got really complicated there for awhile and at one point I wasn’t allowed to leave the country even though my mother’s Social Security (US) got cancelled and I was the only one who could reinstate it and their website doesn’t have a secure server (I kid you not) and no one on the phone had any authority to actually help anyone who phoned in but somehow I managed to get it all sorted and eventually got my citizenship reinstated, too, yay me!)

And the fact that I am now intimately connected to my dentist….

No, sorry, that’s still just weird.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.  What will you be celebrating?

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14 Responses to Celebrating Murphy’s Law

  1. Noreen says:

    Oh Barb! This made my jaw drop and nearly cry with laughter but not quite because it’s not *actually* funny and oh……. for that offer of a good long lunch and a hug I could return! 🙂 xox

    • Barb says:

      You know, I was wondering why I’m tired today. And then I wrote it all down and it made a bit more sense.

      Lunch is definitely on the books then. We’ll find a way to make it work!

  2. Douglass says:

    You got it right, Barb. Just go “Yay!”

  3. Susan Young says:

    I totally love that you’re celebrating Murphy’s Law. Maybe Murphy will tire of the celebration and go away. Take care!

  4. Beth E says:

    While you are celebrating with Murphy, make sure he’s drunk enough so that he doesn’t notice me sticking him in a box and mailing him to the Bermuda Triangle..

  5. heidi says:

    Good grief! What tangled-up lives we lead…lives intertwined with generations of people, with ownership of things that vie for our attention, and with an environment that either encroaches on us, or has us encroaching on it….never mind the roots of ‘tasteless’ trees or nasty molars!!

    You are well….Yay!

  6. 🙁 but you turn it 🙂

    that is what i like about you… so far. i can’t wait to learn more about your positive spin on things… a lesson i find very challenging but you inspire me.

  7. Tracy Bachellier says:

    LOL! If we weren’t able to laugh at all the shit that comes our way, it would do us in! Our house will be 99 yrs old in January (same as my grandmother!) and we have the same problem with tree roots growing in the connections and pipes. Calvin Ische usually comes to visit with the “snake” about every 3 or 4 years…hang in there, Barb! And best wishes to Alan’s dad…my thoughts go out to him for chemo success and recovery, please keep us posted…

  8. Barb says:

    Thanks Tracy. I laugh off the things that don’t matter. It gives me strength for the important stuff – like Alan’s dad and all the other people I love.

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